Earlier this week, we ran a story on GoboLinux, and the distribution's effort to replace the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard with a more pleasant, human-readable, and logical design. A lot of people liked the idea of modernising/replacing the FHS, but just as many people were against doing so. Valid arguments were presented both ways, but in this article, I would like to focus on a common sentiment that came forward in that discussion: normal users shouldn't see the FHS, and advanced users are smart enough to figure out how the FHS works.

I am more or less indifferent to how a file structure is designed from windows to linux and gobo and everything in between they all make some sense but all require the layout to be memorized. where is the user's data kept how about his configuration settings quite frankly I only want to have to learn so many layouts.

Ideally a layout should keep program files easy to find and separate from any data and configuration which should also be easy to find. I want to back up quick and not miss configurations or user data. I can't think of any major file structure that completely fails in this regard worse than the windows structure quick where are the outlook and quicken user files.

If the only major advantage to gobo is multiple versions are easy to keep is that a big enough benefit to learn a whole new system. That sounds like a personal decision to me.